candidates so he really imported his vote and it is also interesting i'd lodge cancally he killed, ideologically he killed it on moderates and liberals. >> and that option exists for him? >> al, sum it up for us as we leave the coverage of this ia caucus and look forward to new hampshire, in terms of obama and the outlines of a campaign to come in the general election regardless of who the candidate is? >> well, obama cheerily with eight and a half percent unemployment is a president who is in danger on reelection, my guess is the white house and david axelrod are pleased with the iowa results tonight, they don't have a very strong front runner, there wasn't any clarity, it that prospects for going on at least for a while. and i would say that right now as weak as obama is, that i would rather be in obama's shoes than the republicans at this very moment. >> rose: so you would think at this very moment, obama should

be paved in the general election regardless of who the candidate is? >> well, it would be 50.2 percent, charlie, i don't want to exaggerate. >> rose: 30 seconds, go. >> the irony is if the republicans could ever gather around romney i think romney would be a very formidable candidate against obama, the only one they have. >> rose: mark. looking ahead to the general election, going moment by moment. >> i agree with what joe just said, if romney could get it together and unite the party he would be formidable but i think she struggling to do that and seeing the first indication of that here today. i make the president a favorite until romney proves he can bring t party together and she a long way to do that as electron as he has been over the last month or so. >> he is selling himself to nservative, the autheicity what is he at his core? and if he doesn't done that yet can he do that? >> mark? >> i think that he is not really told his story, people have

mocked his stump speech in the last few days of this campaign, for citing song lyrics of patriotic songs, he needs to find a better narrative to prove she a man of consistency and not a flip flopper. >> he will remain the default candidate, that may well be must have to win and the primary, the nomination, and en against obama his great quality will be inoffensiveness when republicans are trying to make the election about a choice about obama. >> rose: and thank you, rich, thank you, joe, thank you, albert, thank you, mark. back in a moment. stay with us. richard holbrook last year was a huge loss to the world of foreign policy, his passing prompted an outpouring of testimony recalling his outsized

personality and momentous accomplishments, bill clinton said in the end what matters is there are a lot of people walking around on the pace of the earth today or their children or their grandchilen because of the waye lived his life, a new book, takes us through remarkabljourney of holbrook's life, includes a compilation of essays by those who knew him well along with a selection of articles by holbrook himself, it is called the unquiet american. joining me now two of the book's contributors goldstein is an author and former senior advisor to the office of the un secretary-general and two-time pulitzer prize winner journalist and an author andournalist and in the i am so pleased to have each of them here to talk about this. i nt to talk first about the idea of what it is that we ought most to be understanding about him. i mean all the public stuff is know. >> right. >> rose: clearly. we know about dayton.

we know about -- because he was a larger than life character. what do you want us to know? >> well, he is very hard for a single volume to contain this personality, because hwas the most voracious consumer of life and every aspect of the human experience. there was nothing, he wasn't interested in, there was no place on the planet where richard holbrook was a tourist. he was essentially a problem soer and since god knows the anet is rich in problems, he never ran out of things to do, and the fields that he embraced and achieved remarkable things in, asia, vietnam, the balkans, making peace in the bloodiest war since the second world war. in the field of culture,

starting the american academy in berlin in the field of medicine, even, hiv aids, which he forced the united nations security council to grapple with. the first time ever that a health issue had been so treated, gave it a whole new perspective. so his last mission was incomplete because he died very suddenly and unexpectedly, but i think these gentlemen will tell you more than i can, especially david road that in afghanistan and pakistan he was making remarkable headway and the things i have had admiral mullen, the admiral in the joint chiefs the this things that are working in afghanistan, not so much is working in pakistan now, but i think as richard holbrook were alive, things would not be

in quite the dire shape between the united states and pakistan, but but what is working in pakistan is on the civian side was planted b richard, so it is an astonishing career. >> rose: tell me about vietnam, because i first got to know him when he came back from vietnam. >> well, what most people don't appreciate is that the first seven years of richard holbrook's career were consumed with vietnam and it really had a tremendous impact on his career. i think one could argue that it is a paradigm of sorts. he grappled with the reality of vietnam for seven years, as a diplomat in saigon, in the provinces of washington, he grappled with the aftermath of vietnam as the assistant secretary of state in the carter administration dealing with the humanitarian crisis and the refugee prlem and i believe arguably he tried to apply the ssons of vietnam in subsequent chapters of his career, trying to learn the lessons of coercive

diplomacy in bosnia a and the limits of american power and american strategy in afghanistan, but it was really the seven years i think that shaped all of that. >> and i was going to sayin terms of the journalistic career partly was engaged in that too in vietnam as well, and even to the point of working with clark clifford on his book. >> yes. one of -- richard was always in search of mentors because s own father died when he was very young, and clark was and avril harry man and dean rusk were his three principle mentors and pretty good mentors, secretary of state dean rask who actually who actually told this unformed .. fellow he should take the foreign service exam and he did and he became the youngest ever diplomat in our nation's history and was addition patched to vietnam, but vietnam made a lasting impact on the rest of

his career because it was in vietnam that he rlized the limit to american power andthat how carefully we should prepare for military engagement and this was the lson that he brought to his final mission as well. >> rose: talk about that, and then we will talk about your personal experience, but in terms of afghanistan and pakistan, in my theory that he always wanted to have india as part of that sort of jurisdiction that he w given. >> he should have. >> he should have and that is the problem we face today is that the rival between india and pakistan plays on the ground in afghanistan with american troops caught in the middle and he knew that and he knew that pakistan was a key player in what is happening there, and you have seen a tremendous deterioration in the relationship between the u.s. and pakian, maybe that would have happened with holbrook working this, but i don't think so. he always -- he said to me over anand over again we need to make this a less transactional relationship and have to respect the pakastanis and their

concerns about india and the question, the only hope left for afghanistan is sort of what security guarantees would get the pakastani army to stop supporting the taliban? and they are. and that is the reality, they are not our ally, and they are the primary source of instability in the region and that is where richard imissed so dearly, he started the back channel and all of these talks that are talking about the taliban, he very quietly, over the top personality that i think was exaggerated, worked the back channels, never leaked to anyone. >> rose: the notion of an over the top personality was exaggerated or what was exaggerated? >> well, he was a, and we talked about this, there were times when he blew up and it was for effect. it was for effect, and calculated, and then i think in the funny thing about my two episodes with him, one in bosnia and afghanistan, he mellowed over the years and i think his tremendous achievement in ending the war in bnia, you know, filled him with a different sense, and he was -- i at this

he was different this afghanistan and not as aggressive as he coul could be sometimes. >> he knew, charlie, he had a ace in history, he was a storian hielf so there was a sense of calm about his role. he would never turn down any job that the president of the united states offered, however -- i mean he really drew the short straw with afghanistan, pakistan. but it was a great testament on the part of president obama with whom richard had no prior relaonship to hand him the toughest diplomatic portfolio and it wouldn't occur to richard to turn that down. he was not a young man and this was a very physically demanding job, but off he went. >> rose: but i mean was it hard for him knowing that he did not have the kind of connection to the president that he wanted? >> of course. of course. and how did it express itself? >> he couldn't have done this job without hillary standing right next to him, right behind him watching his back and he had that -- >> rose: what a job for henry

being right there. >> absolutely. >> rose: the president -- >> i don't think president obama really got a sense of the man. joe klein, one of your many guests, said to me after the first memorial for richard that president obama probably the learned more about holbrook this afternoon. >> rose: than down in the kennedy center. >> yes, than ever been before, which is unfortunate, but richard was hillary's principal foreign policy advisor and what i don't think this administration understood at the beginning was that for richard, once the elections were over, he worked for the president, he worked for the country. >> rose: i know, but the real question is, after he tragically left us, did they begin to understand then what he meant to us? >> yes, yes, hillary has id now they uh understand. >> rose:. >> we now know what you mean? >> yes. she called me last wish to say

they get it now, they get it now, they called me last winter. better late than ever. >> rose: the mellowing part -- i never saw the mellowing. did you see the mellowing? >> surprise. >> yes,. >> rose: he never showed that to me. >> this will shock you but he was -- he was a patient man, at least with me, a very good husband, and in terms of -- he was perfectly finenot being secretary of state once mean appointmented, once the president appointed hillary, you know, he was never one to waste time with might have been. >> rose: i agree with that too, but he wanted toe secretary of state because he thought he could do something with that job and he thought he knew something and he thought he had the kind of understanding. i mean the amazing thing in telling a personaltory, in

your story, richard would call me every time there was an interesting book he read, including yours, and say, you have got to do this, you have to have himon. you have to look at this. or he would say to me, a the me of some flood somewhere, why aren't you doing something about the flood? but he had that kind of involvement in everybody, he was playing those kind of chords everywhere. >> that's why he is so missed. >> rose: again, that is why he never mellowed either. >> well, mellow, yes. >> rose: we will come back to that. let me talk about your personal story, because it is an important one and it shows, i think, what did come out after his death, i think more and more. there were so many direct connections between richard holbrook and somebody also else in an individual way. that's one point, the other point, that was always, which liked enormously about him, was this idea to try to learn, and if he could fin somebody, some week book, some person, some connection, when he was in afghanistan he would put together after ban so he could

talk to them and have them tell him what was going on at the grnd level. >> and both times in bnia, and the bosnian serbs, he literally very much so, you know, almos stopped th peace talks and milan lucic said, unfortunately 13 years later it happens again and i dreaded calling him whenever the capture of the taliban ended because i promised it wouldn't happen again and when i did call him, and thiss the mellowing argument, he was incredibly kind and didn't sort of say, you know, yet again you create this big mess for me and back to learning, though, i came back to new york and he spent hours and hours and hours saying to me, what were the taliban like? why are they fighting, what do he want? >> rose: i madehat point. i don't think u have to be mellow to do that. that is a thirst for information and knowledge and experience that he could usen his own --

do you dagree? >> i agree. i know that i have many friends on the ahpac team. >> they were nervous about his hiring andery impressed actually with how they treated him. >> a lot of th eruptions were planned too, a lot of the eruptions were staged, certainly when dealing with milan lucic he would, mill second. >>his is what is interesting that comings out of her too, what i read and what i know, be through is also the sense of being so calibrated that he would decide who would sit next to whom at which dinner. >> oh, yes. no dinner table diplomacy was very important to him when we were at the u.n. and ambassador we would pore pore ov the seatg, richard loved the unexpected tting whoopi goldberg next to george soros, i mean, he was brilliant in tha.. but i think your point, charlie, that he was so interested in people, i think

that i don't know anyone else who gives or gave of himself as much as richard gave of himself to -- and that is why, i mean, i still get letters almost every day from people he had interaction with because people really thought that they were his best friend, there are thousas of people walking the face of the planet because he loved to be helpful, how many people in public life really spend themselves on behalf of others? not in big headline making deals, he did some of those, but just helping people out. he loved doing that, that was one of his real joys. >> rose: this may be hard for you so, this is an appearance on our program on may 26th, 1998. here it is. >> this was a rather bizarre period in my life, because ten days earlier i got married in

budapest to patty martin, born in budapest that lives in new york and you have haon the program, and the day we got married, which was a sunday, was a day i am sure your viewers will remember, when 500 u.n. peace keepers had been chained, telephone pole on trees and being photographed by the world and the bosnian serbs are saying we are going to execute these people if any bombing takes place. d three hours before our wedding, knowing there was a meeting that was going to take place in the white house, at the exact moment of our wedding, i called my deputy john corn bloom, the chief of staff, and madeleine albright the u.n. ambassador on a conference call and said, look, my recommendation is you give the serbs 48 hours to free everyone unharmed, if they don't start bombing. and they thought i was kidding, i really wasn't. i believed then and how that

would have worked. and then we talked a while and they said they would relay. and i said i have to go now i am going get married. so we got married and had our honeymoon in france during the whole dreadful periodf the hostages, and it was realla low point for the west. >> rose: you lived that. >> yes. >> rose: it was the first year of your marriage was -- >> ref, every single day was shadowed by the war and i remember him barking into the phone talbert was in crge of the state department. >> rose: right. >> in madeleine's absence, start the bombing, start the bombing, which is not ectly what a bride wants to hear, but, of course, that was richard, who really felt that there were times when only force of arms works, and before diplomacy can succeed you have to -- >> rose: mill virtue mill lo

se vick. >> what did you think his plan was for afghanistan? and how much military .. he wanted to see? because he said to me more than once the problem is that diplomacy does not have the same role that military does, and that is part of our problem. >> yes. >> yes. i think that he would have thought the surge was too big, the obama surge, and he saw in vietnam that a military, can take on a life of its own, he was waiting for diplomatic effort and very patient and had a very rough first year as special representative, and he was -- we talked about this the other night he told someone, one of his younger aides that diplomacy and politics is a lot like basketball you want to kind of hang around the hoop and be there at the right time and that's what he was doing. he always kw the only way to end the cflict in afghanistan would be a regional settlement involving india and pakistan and he wa you know, waiting for that to ham, and he was told by many people it was mission impossible to quit, to give up,

but he wasn't impatient, he waited and was waiting for a bond conference which just happened and was essentially a failure, pakistan didn't even go, i am not sure he would have allowed that to happen. >> just last week and the horrifying bombing in kabul the same day. >> the day after bin laden was executed, richard would have been on a plane to pakistan, and he would have been in favor of not letting the pakastanis know about that mission, of course, but then he would have been all over pakistan working up and down the chain of command, he was ofirst-name basis with everybody in pakistan, and he would have been working that case. and trying to rebuild that trust, he -- he was not naive about pakistan, but he thought that of the two, afghanistan and pakistan, pakistan was by par the more dangerous stroo remember what he did for me? he arranged arranged for karzai and the prime minister of pakistan to be on the same show because i

went to the secretary of state and said, you know, thinking that several days after that, said, thank you, knowing richard was involved, richard called me and said i can get the two of them together, and never on television before but richard convinced them they should sit at my table in washington and we had a conversation with them and got them talking with each other. obviously it didn't do any good. but richard would have been on th plane, even if he was not on power, he would have flown to afghanistan. >> yes as he did in bosnia, he went to the bosnia whenthe republicans were in the white house. >> rose: exactly. >> and that was his involvement, that was the beginning of his involvement, he was -- he didn't seem to need a title or a job to be holbrook. >> rose: indeed. reflect more on your friendship and how long you knew him and how -- >> well, ironically, all of the authors who contributed to this volume, my relationship with

richard holbrook was the most finite, i only met him after he reviewed my work for the new yoryork times" but i learned subsequently -- >> put him on the -- >> that was the kind of thing he liked to do for people. he barely knew he just thought you were bright and -- >> rose: go ahead. >> but i learned subsequently that he had urjdz people in the administration to take my book seriously and reflect on the lessons of vietnam and i think -- >> rose: the book about bundy. >> yes, lessons in disaster and about the americanation of the war and the subject about which holbrook was a gre expertnd during the debate in the situation room, ithe autumn of 2009, richard holbrook watched as so many in the parallel elements in the debate in the white house in 1965 played out, he was very preoccupied with the parallels between vietnam and afghanista there were three in particular that were worried him. one he saw that in both vietnam

and afghanistan, we were reliant upon a corrupt partner government. two, he was very preoccupied with the existence of an indefensible border, that was a sanctuary for enemy forces, there was no way to control the border between afghanistan and pakistan and there was no way to control the ho chi minh trail. >> rose: go ahead. >> and third, he was quite uneasy with the embraced of counterinsurgency strategy and the requirements for population protection pacification and nation building, he saw based on his own hard fought experience in vtnam how extrrdinarily difficult it is to execute that strategy, he saw the requirement for a political consensus to exist for a very protracted period of time, for decades, really, to execute the strategy and he didn't see that happening here. so he was not a loud or influential voice in that debate, but he was an extraordinarily keen observer of

the debate that went thon the white house, and you saw all of the parallels to vietnam. he said that, for example, joe biden, who was aring for a doctrine of cotererrorism as opposed to a doctrine of counter insurnsurgency, he said history will remember m as one of the most insightful voices in this debate, he will be remembered as george is remembered in the escalation of the vietnam war. >> rose: let me finally close. this is an introduction here. and william from the character of the happy warrior, and is quote who is a happy warrior, who is he every man in arms should wish to be, it is the generous spirit when brought among the task of real life have brought among the plan that pleased his childish thought, hose high endeavors are inward light make the path for him always bright who with a natural instinct to discern what knowledge can is diligent, stops not there, but makes his moral

being his prime care. this book is called the unquiet american. >> thank you. >> thank you charlie. captioning sponsored by rose communications captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org